You may remember that a few months ago, we sampled Magnolia Bakery’s Ditto cupcake, inspired by “Ghost — The Musical.” Now, Carrie Bradshaw’s favorite sweets purveyor is at it again with the Buddy cupcake, named after the title character of “Elf — The Musical.” And so we pulled up our sleeves and got down to business.

Like its predecessor, this little sugar bomb (sold only at the Rockefeller Center branch) comes in vanilla and chocolate cake, both covered in pale-yellow vanilla buttercream frosting with a meringue thingamajig on top.

The Buddy cupcakes

Magnolia tends to struggle with its vanilla cake, and the Buddy fit that pattern. I much prefered the chocolate version, which was moister than the vanilla one. “The chocolate cake was uncharacteristically moist for Magnolia,” @work editor/writer Christina Amoroso concurred. “But too much frosting!”

Features reporter Doree Lewak was less forgiving: “As with everything else that tends to get dressed up for the holidays, this cupcake has really gotten the royal treatment. Festooned with lots of sugary razzle-dazzle, at first blush it almost looks too precious to eat. And once you do, you sort of regret it. The sparkly dusted icing is hard and unforgiving, and betrays the melt-in-your-mouth sensation you’ve come to expect in a Magnolia sweet. For all its pomp and circumstance, the chocolate cupcake was underwhelming at best.”

Her colleague Leah Cooper partly disagreed: “I’m not a huge fan of icing so the ultra-thick layer was a bit much,” she said. “But the chocolate cake was delish and I loved the glitter sprinkles — so festive!”

As for features reporter Sara Stewart, she thought the tie-in worked on a conceptual level: “This is basically your standard-issue Magnolia cupcake with extra sprinkly things on top. I slightly question the wisdom of ingesting glitter, which seems like something Will Ferrell’s character in the movie would totally do. The mint meringue topper is a nice touch, though its sugar-on-sugar effect makes the whole experience ridiculously sweet — again, very evocative of the movie. So I guess it’s a win!”